The information you need to start your day, from PaymentsSource and around the web:

Emergency money

A proposed coronavirus relief bill leaves space for Venmo and Zelle to funnel money to underbanked and other consumers.

The Emergency Money for the People Act, introduced by Reps. Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, and Ro Khanna. D-Calif., would send most Americans $2,000 per month until the economic crisis abates. The bill specifically mentions Venmo, Zelle and PayPal as methods to expedite the government payments and reach a broader set of people.

PayPal was among the first non-banks to get permission to make loans under the government's recently passed small business rescue package.

Bloomberg News

Picturing food

Instagram has partnered with ordering platform ChowNow to make pictures of food shoppable.

Restaurants can add stickers to Instagram photos or stories, which will have a direct link to order forms pre-filled with the meal or a gift card option, reports Engadget.

Instagram hopes to boost order and delivery volume at restaurants, which are largely closed to dine-in customers due to the coronavirus pandemic. The stickers are also shareable.

Open gateway

Mongolian fintech High Payment Solutions has collaborated with ACI Worldwide to build Mongolia's first payments gateway.

While more Mongolians are shopping online, there is a lack of reliable payment methods to support international e-commerce, Hi-Pay contends.

Crypto attacks

The U.S government has issued a new warning alleging North Korea is using cryptocurrency-related attacks to fund its weapons of mass destruction programs.

The country has committed payment fraud to raise more than $1.5 billion in cryptocurrency, reports Coindesk, adding the FBI and other agencies are asking other governments to strengthen anti-money laundering and other digital currency controls.

North Korea has frequently been tied to hacks on financial systems, mostly to circumvent sanctions from the U.S. and other nations.

US banks detail dramatic fall in credit card spendingFINANCIAL TIMES | Wed April 15, 2020First-quarter earnings reports from big US banks capture the dramatic changes in customer behaviour that occurred as the US was shut down in March — including a dramatic reduction in consumer spending.

Cashless transactions spike as Covid-19 forces public to adaptTHE STRAITS TIMES | Thu April 16, 2020The Covid-19 outbreak has drastically accelerated Singapore's shift to a cashless world, with unprecedented growth in the number of e-payment transactions amid a sharp decrease in cash withdrawals and deposits.

Incentive marketing is an alternative to deferral for card issuersWhile the primary focus for most credit card providers in March was on emphasizing fee forgiveness and payment deferral support, moving forward issuers need to focus on a mix of strategies to retain their cardholders' share of spend, says The Futurist Group's Demitry Estrin.

SEPA finds firmer footing amid coronavirus shutdownsEven before the coronavirus pandemic, it was becoming clear that the work of the past decade to establish the Single Euro Payment Area was paying off with real-time payments networks and opening possibilities for another European payments scheme.

Self-ordering is self-checkout's next companionThe fourth industrial revolution has arrived and brought with it cloud computing, the IoT, artificial intelligence, machine learning and other buzzwords we’ve all heard in the last number of years. What’s coming next and what are the implications to business owners and consumers?

Loyalty marketing can help merchants, but the messaging has to be rightMany companies are working to adjust to the current circumstances amid COVID-19, and securing the safety of customers and staff is number No. 1 on the list. Once these priorities are in place, brands that can stay open, either for in-person or online access, can then turn to other aspects of running a business, like customer retention and loyalty.